Are there a lot of people who have trouble with listening? When I took level 1, that was by far the easiest part for me -- even from an objective standpoint, the difficulty level of the content is significantly lower than in any other part of the test. I guess it's just hard for me to imagine someone being able to read the reading passages quickly enough to answer the questions correctly in the time allotted, but not be able to pass the listening part.

I looked at the N1 questions there; it's hard for me to tell whether it's significantly harder than the original 1-kyuu. The reading passages were not all that challenging in comparison, although I noticed the grammar section has a different format than before (now the grammar points are all embedded in a reading passage rather than just being isolated sentences for each one). Certainly the kanji requirements don't look any worse than they were before, and the subject matter and vocab of the passages did not seem to be overly difficult (in comparison to the original 1-kyuu).

(They're still preserving the furigana from the original source, which is realistic, I suppose. The words in that sample test that have furigana are 観る, 癒す, 鞭, 貼る, 脚環, and 家電.)

I think a lot of people are having a lot of difficulties with the listening part. That has made me wonder many times why they don't change the format. Like playing the text twice. After all, asking someone 'what did you say', is something you can always do in real life as well.

In most languages courses that I have experience with, the listening test will consist of a real conversation to be followed by questions. That way, at least there is some context to make sense of what you hear.With JLPT, it's totally unnatural and nonsensical short conversations. If you don't catch the keyword of the question (like when a supervisor is fiddling around with papers of the previous test), you're done for.

In my opnion, it doesn't compare to the level of the test, as most of the people taking the tests will not have had much practise in actually conversing in Japanese. And conversing in a language that you have a solid basis for, is something that you pick up very easily and quickly when you need to (meaning when everyone around you is speaking in that language....). No need to make the listening part so inapproachable, is what I think...When you took JLPT1 ( a very advanced level, obviously) had you already spend time in Japan?

katafei wrote:In my opnion, it doesn't compare to the level of the test, as most of the people taking the tests will not have had much practise in actually conversing in Japanese.

Why would you think that? I can see that for JLPT 4 or 3, but by the time you get to 2 or 1? Like I said, on level 1 the level of the listening content is significantly lower than the language level of the rest of the test, so you wouldn't need to be a master at spoken Japanese to be able to pass it.

When you took JLPT1 ( a very advanced level, obviously) had you already spend time in Japan?

When you took JLPT1 ( a very advanced level, obviously) had you already spend time in Japan?

A year and a half.

I always thought that the listening was the easiest part as well, but talking with my friends who haven't been to Japan, I find that they have more trouble with it (even though the grammar used is MUCH simpler than the rest of the test).

If you look at the score breakdowns in the back of the testing books, you'll notice that people in Japan score higher on the listening section and worse on the reading section on average, while people abroad are the opposite. I think that even a small amount of native listening practice really goes a long way to helping the understanding the listening.

That could also be because JLPT 1 grammar and reading is so much more difficult than level 2 (or so I understand from others ^^). I have listened to JLPT1 listening test and they didn't seem that much more difficult than level 2, but this is not very objective information

edit: and I'm not so sure people who are capable of taking level 1 are the ones to set the mark by, anyway.I seem to remember having seen total results of contestants and the listening section always seems to be the one with the worst scores. And that, again, has always made me wonder why they never change the format.I really don't think the way of testing (but that goes for the other parts as well, I admit) shows the level of competence of the student. but it's still fun to see what you can manage, anyway...